


and lead us not into

by nonwal



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mental Institutions, Suicidal Thoughts, please give this man a hug, the unfortunate implications of the Keen Mind feat, time to explore the angstiest part of the angsty dirt wizard's angsty backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 09:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonwal/pseuds/nonwal
Summary: As the woman removes her hands and the clouds with them, his first lucid thought in this decade isgive them back, put them back put them back put them back—Because he remembers now, and it is terrible, and he does not know how to stop remembering.(In which Caleb Widogast makes some decisions about how he is allowed to die.)





	and lead us not into

**Author's Note:**

> _I was in the darkness;_   
>  _I could not see my words_   
>  _Nor the wishes of my heart._   
>  _Then suddenly there was a great light —_
> 
> _"Let me into the darkness again."_
> 
> \- Stephen Crane

(He is not aware of the time, or any sense of where he is or how he got here, every second fleeing his mind the moment it passes. Minutes. Hours. Years. It happens all the same. Things come and go, objects and people equally as meaningless.

In one moment he’s aware of a woman, the same way that he exists now: vaguely. 

And hands. 

And light, and then?)

As the woman removes her hands and the clouds with them, his first lucid thought in this decade is  _ give them back, put them back put them back put them back— _

Because he remembers now, and it is terrible, and he does not know how to stop remembering. His traitorous mind will not fall back into blissful oblivion. Instead it catalogs everything he last recalls clearly, fire and fire and fire, and tries to fill in the gaping hole afterwards with hundreds of moments he hadn’t even been trying to hold on to.

_ It is a bit after noon, _ his brain says.  _ You were fed porridge with cream for breakfast and you set the fire that killed them and it is 12:02pm. _

What finally breaks him out of his stupor is not something he’d missed but something extra. An overlap. On one side, a restful evening. On the other, a false conversation that could have only been woven by one person.

He takes a deep breath, walks away, sits over in another corner. The woman makes some whimpering noises, but he cannot afford to care about her right now.

The horrible thing about the false memories is not that his parents were innocent or that his master betrayed him, but that the overlap is scarcely ten minutes. That was all Ikithon needed. Everything else is him acting on his own desires, of his own free will, without a moment of hesitation. It does not matter if his parents were planning to betray the Empire; he is still the man who murdered his parents for planning to betray the Empire, and it only took ten minutes to turn him into that man.

At one time, he was a clever person. As it stands now, he does not even think to pretend the woman changed nothing until two days have passed. It is only by sheer, terrible chance that he spends those two days shambling around like the same broken wreck, lost in his own memories.

The worst ones are not the fire, nor any of his time at the Academy, nor with Ikithon. Not the eerily clear childhood memories of sweet times before then, reminder though they are that his parents were so good to him, and that he killed such good people for such a terrible reason. The worst memory is not waiting for Eodwulf to finish his own dirty business, or feeling proud of Astrid as they watch her parents choke on their own bile. It is not even the false conversation, and all the implications it contains about his own vileness.

The worst memory, the one he would willingly scatter his own brains onto the floor over if he weren’t watched at all times here, is a single, terrible second: before setting the fire, he is sure that this is something he  _ wants _ to do, that this is the right decision, and as they set the cart in front of the door, as he lights it, as he watches the fire engulf the cart and spread onto the roof, he is  _ sure _ this is the right decision. His parents start screaming. He stops being so sure. But for just a moment, the very first second as it’s happening, the two coincide: his parents are screaming, and he is sure that this is something he wants to do.

He cannot live with that memory. He cannot forget it. He does not deserve to do either.

Two days after the woman heals him (wounds him?), he is present as two of the guards exchange watch. The old guard takes something out of his pocket and loops it over his neck.

“Why do you always put that thing on when you leave?” the other says.

The first glances around, eyes skimming right over the corner where he sits, catatonic as a houseplant. “Look, I know the contract says we can be watched at any time. But there’s not enough gold in the world for me to let Ikithon scry on me when I’m not even doing anything important. This,” he says, holding up a small amulet, “this is just to make sure the old creep doesn’t find me in the middle of a bath.”

“Fair enough,” the second guard says. 

Then everything continues the same as it was, except now he is painstakingly aware that he is still under the control of Trent Ikithon, and therefore grave consequences will occur if he does anything noteworthy. He doesn’t know what, but the specifics don’t matter. Trent was the one who taught him how to break people, how to make a great pain even greater, and he cannot withstand the hell inside his own head being any worse than it already is. The thought that Ikithon has had years to further perfect his craft is both terrifying and terribly unjust.

That is his first noble thought, the notion that he cannot allow Ikithon to live. He doesn’t have the audacity to want vengeance for himself, no, not for the monster who was simply made into a greater monster, but the rest of the world? It shouldn’t contain either evil.

That is as far as he’s planned when he steals the amulet, murders the guards, and escapes into the woods. Kill Ikithon, then kill himself.

Of course it isn’t that simple. He’s a half-crazed man wandering through the forest, and he can barely kill a rabbit in this state. If he goes after his former master with what little power he has, he will be the only one to die, and that would be terribly selfish of him.

(Nothing he can do could possibly balance the scales enough that he’d _ deserve _ an end to his suffering, but he is nothing if not a hypocrite.)

He steals food, clothes, books. Immoral, perhaps, but a drop in the bucket compared to everything else he’s done in his life. It takes him weeks to gather enough components for even the simplest of magics, just summoning a familiar.

“Frumpkin,” he calls to it when it appears, because what’s one more memory to hold onto?

He’s discovered that he is still human, somehow. He needs small comforts like a warm cat around his neck, not because he should have nice things but because he does not function well without them. Practicality must come first if he’s to accomplish anything. Gaining enough power to take down Trent will take more energy than he seems capable of mustering even on a good day.

It occurs to him, while stealing bread from a temple one afternoon, that he could spend his precious time and energy on bringing his parents back instead. He’s heard of miracles, acts of divinity undertaken in places just like this. 

But would that be enough? His parents being alive again would not erase the fact that he was the one who killed them. He can’t possibly face them, knowing that he has done the unforgivable. And it would distract from his efforts to kill Ikithon. Gods, how could he possibly choose between one goal and the other?

Things get worse, for a while, after he has this realization. He wants his parents alive, he wants Trent gone, but above everything he wants to stop remembering. He’s reduced to a creature desperate to suffer less but unable to imagine a future where he doesn’t deserve every iota of pain.

And then, a thought: if he cannot imagine a future, perhaps he should undo the past.

A sane man would discard the idea, but thankfully he isn’t sane anymore. He clings to it, draws strength from it. It is more impossible than anything else he has come up with, but it drives him forward, relentless where once he was listless. 

The perfect paradoxical solution: if he cannot forget, let the memory never exist in the first place. Let this current unforgivable version of himself never exist in the first place. That is an acceptable suicide.

Seven months later he ends up in a small prison with a smaller cellmate, a jittery, hungover goblin who could definitely kill him if she weren’t terrified of him. 

He spends most of their first day together casually showing off magic. Cantrips, small tricks, nothing impressive without material components, but perhaps enough to convince a layperson that he is a powerful wizard who is too dangerous to kill in his sleep. When he summons Frumpkin she looks more curious than intimidated. Turning a bit of wood into silver, though, that makes her go still, something hungry and worshipful on her face. Definitely a stronger reaction than any reasonable person would have at the thought of coin or shiny objects.

On the second day, she speaks, with a shrill, rusty voice. “Have you been in a prison before?”

_ “Ja,” _ he says, too surprised to lie. Not surprised enough to tell her that he’d always been on the other side of the bars. “What are you here for?”

The goblin shuffles further back into the nest of straw and blanket scraps she’s made for herself. “Oh, you know. Got caught trying to nab a bit of booze.” A wistful sigh. “Cherry wine.”

“Ah. For me it was books.”

There’s a moment where they both sit in silence, unable to comprehend why someone would risk prison for something so frivolous. Then he shrugs to himself. Who is he to judge, if fine wine is more precious than knowledge to this one?

“I’m Nott,” the goblin says. “Nott the Brave.”

He nods, tells her, “Caleb Widogast.”

Caleb stops worrying about being killed in his sleep. He’s realized now that there’s only one monster in their cell.

On the fourth day there, a few minutes after receiving a dubious glare and some tasteless gruel from one of the guards, he says, “They aren’t feeding us enough here.”

Nott looks up from her bowl, eyes wide. “You can have mine if you need more.”

_ “Was? _ No, that is not what I meant. They are, ah. They seem to have put us together with the hope that we’d attack each other. So they’re feeding us less now, on purpose. To make us turn on each other. For entertainment.”

“Oh,” she says. And then, “Do you think your cat could find us some wire?”

After their escape, which involves more chaos and general mayhem than he’s ever experienced in a single hour, they hide in a ditch. Nott is trembling, practically vibrating.

“I need some liquor,” is all she says once they catch their breath.

“The next closest village is a couple days northeast of here,” Caleb says. “It would be a bad idea to go back into town. No doubt they’ll be looking for us.”

There is no question of if they’ll be working together for a few more days, not when they’re both headed in the same direction anyway. They devise a little ruse to trick a few farmers into handing over coin, get Nott her liquor and Caleb a valuable find from a smut shop of all places. And then they still happen to be heading in the same direction. After a couple more stops, it becomes the assumption that they’ll always be headed in the same direction.

Caleb knows that isn’t true. This is a good thing, which means that it cannot last.

Regardless, two is better than one, and whatever trouble Nott brings is more than worth having her skillset, having someone at his back. A means to achieve his goals more quickly. A distraction from them, too, when he needs one. Getting attached means more pain whenever they finally part, but why would he deserve—

“Trostenwald, twenty miles. Should we head in that direction, you think?”

“Eh, that is a larger town. More risk, but potentially more reward.” He considers it for a moment. “I would like to take that chance, but it is up to you.”

She mulls it over for a bit, weighs her flask in one hand. “I’d like to, but I don’t have the best track record around large groups of people.”

“I will be there to watch your back, this time. Two is better than one,  _ ja?  _ And perhaps we can find more people to travel with, and that would be better than just the two of us.”

“More people? But I’m—” She gestures at herself with a clawed green hand. “I’m  _ me.” _

_ “Ja, _ a delightful person who also happens to be a goblin. If we do join a bigger group, we would make sure that they don't have a problem with that.”

“That’s fair.” Nott takes a swig of the concoction in her flask. “Sure, why not? If it causes a problem, we can just leave.”

“Excellent point. We’ll stay on guard and it will be fine.” 

The matter being settled, they turn towards the sign labeled  _ Trostenwald _ and whatever else lies in wait for them there. And if that “whatever else” is a problem, they will just leave.

Caleb considers Nott as she scampers a bit ahead, keeping to the long afternoon shadows. Would she be so trusting if she knew what he’d done? Would any of their hypothetical travel companions accept him if they knew his secrets?

He abandons that line of thinking and shrugs, scratching Frumpkin in apology for disrupting his perch around Caleb’s shoulders. 

If it causes a problem, he can just leave.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come yell about book holsters with me on Tumblr.](http://nonwal.tumblr.com/)


End file.
